Work on the Beatrice wind farm project in the outer Moray Firth helped Subsea 7 to a small upturn in profits in the second quarter of 2017.
The subsea engineering and construction services giant posted second quarter pre-tax profits of $206.2million (£158million), up 0.34% year-on-year.
Revenues jumped 6% year-on-year to £780million, meanwhile.
Subsea 7 chief executive Jean Cahuzac hailed “another quarter of excellent results”, driven by “good execution and continued focus on cost efficiency”.
“We have made significant progress on our strategy to grow and strengthen our business,” Mr Cahuzac said.
Subsea 7, which in the north and north-east employs about 1,000 people across operations in Westhill, near Aberdeen, and Wick, said it expected full-year 2017 revenues to be higher than last year’s total.
The Luxembourg-domiciled firm said that if crude prices hold at current levels and costs continue to come down, the number of contract awards could increase by the first half of 2018.
In the second quarter, revenues for the firm’s renewables and heavy lifting division soared to £250million from £1.5million a year earlier thanks mainly to its involvement in Beatrice.
Subsea 7 and its Seaway Heavy Lifting subsidiary are working together on the fabrication and installation of jacket foundations and array cables for Beatrice.
Pile installation work started in April.
The £2.6billion, 84-turbine Beatrice development eight miles off the coast of Caithness is expected to power about 450,000 homes and is due to be operational in 2019.
It is a joint venture by SSE, with a 40% share, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners on 35% and Chinese power generation company SDIC with 25%.
Subsea 7, which in Westhill has consolidated a slimmed-down workforce on to one site, said gains from its renewables arm were offset by lower activity in its subsea umbilicals, risers and flowlines (Surf) and conventional business units, which suffered a 29% drop in revenues.
But the company did say that it had made good progress on several Surf and conventional projects in the North Sea, including on Dana’s Western Isles development and Premier Oil’s Catcher field.
Subsea 7 also said it had cracked on with flowline installation on Maersk Oil UK’s Culzean project.
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